Christian Practice

Should Christians greet one another with a holy kiss?

The New Testament repeatedly tells believers to greet one another with a “holy kiss” or “kiss of love”. Christians disagree over whether the physical kiss remains the commanded practice, whether another culturally fitting greeting can carry its purpose, or whether the command is principally continued in the church’s liturgical sign of peace.

The question

Where the disagreement lies

Four Pauline letters and 1 Peter attach holiness or love to an embodied greeting. The debate is therefore not whether Christian welcome, affection, equality, and reconciliation matter, but how the apostolic instruction should be practised across cultures, worship traditions, and present-day expectations about consent and safeguarding.

Key texts

Summary

This reading treats the repetition across Paul and Peter as evidence that the physical action belongs to the instruction. “Holy” does not remove the kiss but governs it: the greeting is to express pure affection, peace, equality, and recognised fellowship rather than romance or social advantage. Its form may still require agreed boundaries, such as same-sex practice or a kiss on the cheek.

What this contributes

It takes the bodily form and repeated imperative seriously, and it resists reducing Christian fellowship to an invisible sentiment. Brethren and Anabaptist traditions also show how the kiss could function as a public sign of reconciliation and belonging.

Question to keep in view

The letters do not prescribe one location or mode of kissing, and a physical kiss can communicate very different things across cultures. Any present practice must protect consent, safeguarding, and those for whom touch carries discomfort or risk.

Predicated on

Interpretive commitments this view depends on

Related ideas

TransparencySources, generation and reviewHuman review pending

AI generation record

System
OpenAI Codex AI assistant
Generated
18 August 2026
Review
Human review pending

The AI synthesized the content from the listed biblical, scholarly, and ecclesial sources. Associations describe broad affinities, not formal endorsements by every person or tradition represented.

  1. Church of the Brethren, ‘Love in Context’ equipping session offers biblical and historical reflections on the meaning of love

    A denominational account of the holy kiss in Brethren history and love-feast practice, including its role in repairing relationships.

  2. William Klassen, The Sacred Kiss in the New Testament: An Example of Social Boundary Lines

    A New Testament Studies article examining why the kiss is repeatedly commanded and how it functioned as a public Christian greeting.

  3. John Ellington, Kissing in the Bible: Form and Meaning

    A Bible translation study of the act’s meaning and the difficulty of communicating it faithfully across cultures.

  4. Jennifer Strawbridge, Spiders Are Bad Kissers: The Kiss of Love and the Holy Kiss in Early Christian Writings

    An open-access study tracing the kiss as an embodied practice of equality, unity, reconciliation, and changing ecclesial order.

  5. Orthodox Church in America, Love and Faith

    An official explanation of the kiss of peace as the liturgical expression of love before the confession of faith.

  6. Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, General Instruction of the Roman Missal

    The Roman Catholic rite describes a culturally adapted sign expressing peace, ecclesial communion, and mutual charity before Communion.